Family is very important to me. In fact, my chapbook Hello, it's Your Mother (Finishing Line Press, October 2015) is about my sometimes tumultuous relationship with my mother and how I came to terms with this as I cared for her while she was dying. I learned an important lesson: we all do the best we can. Live your life, live and let live. Please visit me at http://lauriekolp.com.

The Gap Between

9 months, lifemy nephew’s born as I sit beside my sister-in-law,a blue curtain draped to hide the doctors delivering baby surgically I’m wearing a mask and scrubs, my hair covered with capholding her hand—it happens so fast I want to peekbut am told to sit back downall are ecstatic when baby first criesbut no, I’m not the grandmother

9 months latermy mother dies as I sit beside her hospital bedthe stagnant room cold and soundlessand I, cocooned in boundless dreadhoping for repose, these cancerous months crapI lie beside her shell and smell deathwhile my father and sister cry,my tears lost in desert sandsomewhere within a vapid heart